QUANTITIES AND COST ESTIMATES in SketchUp with Quantifier Pro

QUANTITIES AND COST ESTIMATES in SketchUp with Quantifier Pro

In today’s video, we’re going to check out a brand new extension from the guys over at MindSight Studios designed to help you quantify and apply pricing to objects within your SketchUp model! Learn to use Quantifier Pro in this video!

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Plugin Name:

Quantifier Pro

Plugin Developer:

Mind Sight Studios

Plugin Cost: $79 stand alone, or bundled with Profile Builder 3 for 25% off of each extension

Tool Functions –
This extension is designed to help you quantify and price different objects within your SketchUp models. The way it works is you select different objects within your model, then apply cost data to them within quantifier.
Within quantifier, you can select different objects, then within the quantifier dialog, view
As a general rule when using quantifier, put objects of the same material on their own layers. For example, if you’re going to quantify a block wall, try to put all the block wall objects on a block wall layer. What this does is allows you to apply different cost properties to the objects on your layer.
For example, let’s say that I’ve created a foundation wall profile with Profile Builder 3. I’ve set my profile so that every different profile is generated on its own layer – now what I can do is go and apply costs to that layer, so basically the face square footage of everything in that layer will get the cost applied to it.
You can also use this to apply costs to objects by other units within your model, like length. For example, let’s say I use profile builder to create wood base inside my model – if I put that on a wood base layer, I can add a cost item associated with length, and then my report will calculate a cost for the base based on the length and the unit cost.
Note that this also works with profiles that have not been created with Profile Builder, so you can use this to quantify objects you’ve built yourself as well.
You can also apply costs based on the SketchUp materials as well. Note that this will calculate your cost based on materials that have been applied to front side faces only to avoid double counting back side materials.
It is possible to directly override the cost associated with an object using the object option, but generally, I’d prefer to use the last option, which is Model$. This allows you to add cost items directly to your calculation separate from any objects within your model.
One final thing to note – if you’re modeling an object that you’re punching a bunch of holes it, it’s better to model that as standard geometry rather than a profile builder assembly, because they way this is calculating your area is actually calculating using the bounds of an object, so if you cut a hole, it’s not going to be factored into your calculations.
Before talking about reporting, let’s talk a bit about the cost inspector. Basically what the cost inspector does is allows you to click on different objects within your model to see if they have cost data associated with them. This can be very helpful for checking on different objects in your model to make sure you have them covered.
Finally, you can create reports within quantifier that you can either view within SketchUp or export to Excel. Set all your units using the units and precision items in your report settings, then when you’re done, click the “Export SKP to Excel” button.
This will export your report to an excel spreadsheet, which you can then format, edit, etc.
Theoretically you can import cost data from an Excel spreadsheet as well, though I haven’t had the chance to test this yet.

About Justin Geis

Hi, I'm Justin Geis, and I'm the founder of The SketchUp Essentials. I started using SketchUp as part of my work as a general contractor in 2008. I quickly realized the power of the software and started using it for personal projects. I started The SketchUp Essentials as a place to share easy to follow SketchUp tutorials and tips to help everyone harness the power of 3D Modeling in their lives. When not working with SketchUp, I enjoy playing soccer and spending time with my wife and our two dogs.